G-DNA hosts maiden annual conference; pledges to support capacity-building of Ghanaian nurses

The President of the Ghanaian-Diaspora Nursing Alliance (G-DNA), Professor Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, has disclosed that the Alliance was not established to facilitate the evacuation of Ghanaian nurses abroad but to assemble Ghanaian nurses in the diaspora to help in building the capacity of their counterparts in Ghana.

According to her, even though the Alliance is aware that most nurses leave the country to seek greener pasture outside of it due to many reasons, including poor conditions of service and unemployment, that is not the primary reason why the alliance was formed.

“So, you touched on one issue that is very imperative to us. When G-DNA was launched, we wanted to make it clear that our goal was not to come and take nurses from the country; we didn’t want to contribute to what we call brain drain; we wanted to contribute to brain gain, but in our work, we also learned that ethical migration and recruitment of nurses are big issues,” Prof. Commodore-Mensah said.

Due to the above reason, she observed, executives of the association have had roundtable discussions with all the stakeholders who matter in the health sector, and they have given out a drafted proposal or report to NMC, the principal body that regulates the activities of nurses in Ghana, and the report will soon be published for all nurses to ascertain for themselves what the document entails and how well it is going to help facilitate their operations.

“We have actually had two webinars and also a round table discussion here in August 2023, Ghana, at the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana, where we invited the Ministry of Health, the GRNMA [Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwife Association], and other nursing organisations to hold a conversation about this mass migration of nurses.”

“From all indications, it appears that the issue of unemployment is something we cannot disregard, so when talking about the migration of nurses, we also have to touch on the issue that there are people who are trained as nurses in this country who do not have a job, and that is a big problem, and so if these people need a job and the job is not here and they get a job elsewhere, they have a right to work anywhere they want, so we have actually drafted a report on this issue that summarises the roundtable discussion we had and it will be published this month,” she explained further when asked the benefits nurses stand to have if they should join the Alliance.

She, however, said that though the Alliance can help unemployed nurses in Ghana get opportunities outside the country, that can be done after it has exhausted all local avenues.

Prof. Commodore-Mensah disclosed this on Friday, January 5, 2024, during the first-ever conference of the Alliance at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Speaking on the theme “Reimagining Nursing in Ghana Through Education, Research, Clinical Practice, Leadership, and Management,” Professor Commodore Mensah reiterated that there is a need to actually reimagine nursing because nursing is a great profession and nurses are the bedrock of the health care system of every country, yet, she noted, it is also imperative for nurses to periodically school themselves to be abreast of current happenings in their field of work.

For her part, Vice President of the Alliance, Dr. Matilda Decker, called on nurses in Ghana to challenge themselves to undertake research within the Ghanaian context, contrary to having outsiders who do not have a deep understanding of the Ghanaian situation come in to do research.

Established on January 6, 2022, the Ghanaian-Diaspora Nursing Alliance is a non-governmental organisation whose sole aim is to mobilise Ghanaian nurses all over the world, aside from Ghana, to bring on board their expertise to help train and support Ghanaian nurses in the country.